Art Blog

My latest focus was on a water theme. I finished three swans, each different from the other, all brooches. Unlike some of my recent brooches, these do not have the Inuit or the steam punk look. I also created a couple of water lily pins in keeping with the water theme, but I am not going to include them in this post.

The first of the three swans was a fairly realistic piece, somewhat stylized, but softly realistic in color and shape. His neck took a lot of fiddly work to get right, I found, as the sinuous shape is tricky to render correctly. That part took by far the longest. He has a soft-focus look to him. I used Pearl Premo clay to sculpt him, coloring him with white MicroPearl mica powders, with a touch of copper and black for the beak and eye area, before baking.

Two metallic-look swans followed the white one, both inspired from an Art Deco brooch, but different in style and shape. The first has spread wings and a more detailed, feathered look, while the second is more abstract and stylized. That swan is also the smallest of the three brooches. Both of these were sculpted in silver Premo polymer clay and brushed with silver, gold, and copper mica powders before baking.